Re: Apple ///?

[pubpc1@library.ucla.edu]

bjbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major & Dennis J. Gorin) wrote:
>>      As things turned out, the Apple III was a miserable failure and
>> so was the Apple Lisa. Despite that, the Apple II not only kept the
>> company afloat, but highly profitable too (which came as a surprise
>> to management at the Apple Computer). Oddly enough, Apple once again
>> decided to try and replace the Apple II, this time with the Macintosh,
>> but yet again their new computer didn't do to well and _again_ it was
>> the Apple II that kept the company afloat and profitable. By the late
>> 80's the Mac was strong enough to stand on it's own though, so this
>> 3rd replacement had worked out. Ironically though, now that Apple has
>> finally killed off the Apple II, it doesn't look like the company will
>> have any future. :)
>
>That last sentence "now that Apple has finally killed off the Apple //"; I
>think you need to revisit history.  The decision to no longer support
>production of future Apple // models was made some years ago, although
>there is some software support for Apple // still on Apple's FTP sites.
>And the decision to "kill off the Apple //" has nothing to do with the
>present state of affairs at Apple Computer.  Their present problems are
>caused by these things:

[snip]

>I don't happen to agree with Apple's decision to axe the // line
>(especially the //gs), but the Macintosh was gaining strong momentum and
>much more visible and in use as a standard platform than what we see now.
>To blame Apple's present problems on the decision to axe the // line is
>shortsighted at the least.


B.J., I think you have to look at it in the light of the user base.
In the early days of Apple computing, when the IBM PC and then PC/XT
came out, do you remember the market share that Apple had?  They
had 80%.  This was AFTER the famous PC onslaught.  At the time of
the Apple //e, the II was entrenched in the schools (Commodore and
the Trash-80's made up a few percentages and the rest were Apples) and
even made a mark on businesses.  IBM used Apple IIs in its offices
even when it was designing the computer that it aimed to compete
against the II.

PCs have improved much, but they've always remained compatible with
older software.  When the Mac came out, it couldn't run II software.
Thus, when Apple killed the II, the user base flocked to IBM and
clones.  With a PC, you can always run your old software.  Back when
the Mac was introduced, they were asking us to trash our investment
in software and buy a new library!  The GS had all the new features
of the Mac (Mac Plus, to be exact), better graphics (>horizontal res,
color, and true grayscale) and sound than the Mac Plus, and ran older
software as well as new GUI ones.  Apple chose not to be compatible
and killed the GS to go with the Mac, a strategy that backfired.

-Scott G.